Gordon Brown, Past Chair of the Legalize Marijuana Committee

It was 49 years ago that Canada began the process of legalizing marijuana by establishing an inquiry into the non-medical use of drugs. It recommended ending convictions for possession or for growing marijuana for personal use. One commissionaire went further and recommended legal distribution. Just before the inquiry began, I established The Legalize Marijuana Committee to lobby the government for saner laws and met with the Minister of Health and Welfare and then was the second witness at the commission hearings. The Commissions' recommendations never happened and since then tens of thousands of people have been convicted for what should no longer have been a crime. Two of the purposes of our 1969 campaign were to stop convictions for the inoffensive private use of marijuana and to stop the police from infiltrating and entrapping primarily young people who were losing faith in the law. To restore some faith in justice among the tens of thousands of people convicted the decent thing to do would be an amnesty. That is long overdue.